Next generation IEEE 802.11 ac wireless access points (APs) are capable of wireless local area network (WLAN) Physical Layer (PHY) throughput at greater than 1.7 Gbps. Specifically, an AP's single WLAN radio is capable to transmitting or receiving up to 1.7 Gbps of PHY data from a single wireless client device associated to the AP's WLAN interface. In fact, this entire WLAN data rate can be associated with a single flow between the wireless client device and a wired server. However, because typical wired Ethernet link speeds on the APs are only 1 Gbps, an AP would need at least two wired uplinks to support a wireless throughput of 1.7 Gbps.
Moreover, even with two gigabyte-Ethernet (GigE) links, supporting a wireless throughput of 1.7 Gbps for a single flow still presents problems. First, if packets of a single high bandwidth flow are transmitted on the two separate GigE links, it is possible for the packets to arrive out of order by the time they reach the destination. Some industry standards, e.g., IEEE 802.11i, require an AP to send the packets as ordered by their sequence number to the wireless client device. If packets arrive out of order, the client device will drop the packet. If a threshold number of out-of-order packets have been received, the client device may consider itself under active security attack and take additional steps to refuse receiving further communications from the AP. The second problem is that Ethernet link aggregation (LAG) schemes commonly send packets of a single flow on the same physical link to preserve link affinity, thereby limiting the wireless throughput for a single flow to no more than 1 Gbps.